Slite is a platform that helps remote teams share ideas, save knowledge, and work together anytime, any place. We had the chance to speak with Cristophe Pasquier, the CEO of
Slite, and here’s what he had to say about the company:
Please describe the story behind Slite: What sparked the idea, and how has it evolved so far?
Slite is the third company that I’ve co-founded.
I’ve always been a big note-taker because writing helps me structure my thoughts. And note-taking apps, with their fast and intuitive UX, have helped me build great habits. But I found a problem with all of them: they were limited to single-person use.
This is the foundation that Slite was built on.
I wanted a tool so intuitive, that teams would get into the habit of writing more, sharing knowledge, and improving how they articulate their thoughts. Turns out, this is how remote-first teams were seeking to work together all along. We launched in 2017 and a few thousands of teams quickly picked up Slite to build their internal knowledge bases. They moved over their internal policies and wiki docs from older, clunkier tools such as Google Drive or Confluence, to name a few.
In the meantime, our team was growing, going fully remote, and using Slite as our main communication tool. We were becoming more than a knowledge base—use Slite to share updates, draft meeting notes, collaborate on projects, onboard new hires, build marketing campaigns, and more.
When speaking with other pioneering remote companies, we realized that a lot of them were tweaking tools to communicate asynchronously, manage projects, or document work progress. So we decided to focus on designing Slite for remote companies to go beyond organizing their docs, allowing them to also communicate more clearly and help stay on top of their work.
What services do you offer?
We provide a productivity software application and services for teams committed to being remote.
– Our beautifully designed app is available on both desktop and mobile. It lets teams write, share and organize everything they are working on—from projects to decisions, to processes.
– We also offer educational content, and support on how to better work as a distributed company (for example, remote coaching sessions, guides, and templates).
To put it simply: everything we do is driven by the goal to encourage better, async ways of working together.
What is the mission of Slite?
Bring the best work experience to remote teams: enable rich communication, structure work effortlessly, and promote asynchronous collaboration.
Whether it’s shaping a new project, onboarding a new hire, updating your teams weekly, or simply taking a decision—everything has a workflow in Slite.
Who are your typical customers, and what do you think is the main challenge that your product solves for them?
Many of our paying customers are remote teams, mostly internet businesses from around the globe. Teams that choose Slite need a best-of-breed tool to work asynchronously (codified knowledge, updates, projects, discussions, people management).
Because being remote is hard work. Everything requires more discipline—from communication to documentation, to sharing progress. As a remote company, we understand this first-hand, and it helps us build a tool that brings people the focus and structure they need.
Which trends and technologies do you find to be particularly intriguing these days?
“What’s your productivity stack?”
It’s the first question teams going remote tend to ask. But the questions they should really be asking are: “What communication habits did you put in place? How do you build a remote-first culture?”
Our goal will never be to provide 100 tools to build super complex documents or databases with multiple entries. Instead, we’re more interested in understanding remote-first teams—small and large—so well that our product bends to their style of working and improves their remote setup across the board.
That’s it. Interestingly, for all the productivity tools out there, very few are focused on this.
What are the plans for Slite for the near future?
Our users have spoken, and they want better ways to handle projects in Slite. As avid users ourselves, we totally agree.
Planning is the most critical part of any project. If that’s nailed properly, the rest is about cutting it into smaller tasks and getting them done. So we’re working to help teams shape, organize, and follow projects in Slite.
We’re also bringing more discussion capabilities right into the product. So many decisions and next steps are lost in Slack threads or Zoom calls. We want to help teams take clearer and more transparent decisions right where their work is happening—with transparency in mind.
Finally, we want to give back more to the remote community. We’ll continue to share our learnings and uncover all sides of remote work on our
blog “
Can you hear me” (a tribute to the most popular question in everyone’s remote experience).
